Whether You Think You Can or Can’t…You’re RIGHT!

I had the pleasure of filling in for my friend and colleague John Gibson a couple of days last week and as much fun as I had, I was so dismayed by some of the callers I took on the subject of  jobs, dreams, and opportunities.

From listening to them, one would find no reason to even get up in the morning, let alone even pull the sheets from our sleepy heads.

It’s all doom and gloom, you see.

And it’s all Bush’s fault. Or your wife’s or husband’s. Or the weather’s. Or, as one actually put it, “those rich white people” who took all the jobs and sent them to China.

I can usually tell a successful or unsuccessful caller in the first 30 seconds I have them on the air with me. Same way you can usually tell the general success or lack thereof of people you meet everyday in real life.

Automobile maverick and spirited entrepreneur Henry Ford once said one of my favorite quotations: “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.”

Think about that. It’s totally true, isn’t it?

If you convince yourself you cannot do something (paint a picture, do your taxes, clean the house, catch a ball, get a job, etc.) you do not expend the energy it takes to, in fact, DO those things. But do you really think you can’t do any of those things??

One of my favorite motivational authors and speakers, Jack Canfield, did experiments at seminars in which he had people put their arms out like wings. He had them repeat over and over both “I can” and “I can’t” and then would push down on their outstretches arms while asking them to resist with upward movement.

Whose arms do you think were easier to push down? You guessed it. The people who repeated the negative mantra of “I can’t”! Those who repeated “I can” where more resilient and their arms stayed firmly horizontal.

One of the earliest classics from childhood, “The Little Engine That Could” is really an early tale of this same concept and the Law of Attraction as well.

Notice the Little Engine didn’t try climbing that hill repeating “I think I can’t, I think I can’t, I think I can’t!”

Try starting a race (any race…from the literal foot race to the race for a promotion) with repeating to yourself a thousand times a day “I can’t!! I won’t!! I couldn’t POSSIBLY!!” and see how well you do. I can almost guarantee you will come in last or next to last.

My 10-year-old son came up to me the other day and said, “This homework is impossible. I am terrible at math!”

Well, I explained to him that neither was correct. The homework was NOT impossible or else kids would never, ever get the answers right. And he was NOT terrible at math. It wasn’t his strongest subject, but that just meant there was greater opportunity to IMPROVE himself at it!!

He changed his attitude almost immediately.

Henry Ford was told by his employees that a V-8 was impossible to build. It just couldn’t be done. He shrugged them off and said basically, oh well. Guess you just need to keep trying.

And he was right.

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right!

So…think you CAN for goodness sakes!